More About Bundling
Posted by Marie-Bernadette on August 11, 1998 at 09:16:00:
In response to Bundling, written by Captain Everett on August 10, 1998 at 18:54:50
Here are a couple of paragraphs from a book called The Reshaping of Everyday Life that I mention in a post below.
"Bundling very much abounds," wrote the anonymous author of "A New Bundling Song" still circulating in Boston in 1812, "in many parts in country towns," and bundling was a part of rural American courtship enshrouded in myth and notorius in popular history. Noah Webster's first American Dictionary of the English Language in 1828 defined it as the custom which allowed couples "to sleep on the same bed without undressing"--with, a later commentator added, "the shared understanding that innocent endearments should not be exceeded." Folklore and local tradition, from Maine south to New York, has American mothers tucking bundling couples into bed with special chastity-protecting garments for the young woman or a "bundling board" to separate them.
But in actuality, if bundling had been intended to allow courting couples privacy and emotional intimacy but not sexual contact, it clearly failed. Couples may have begun with bundling, but as courtship advanced they pushed beyond its restraints, like the "bundling maid" in "A New Bundling Song" who would "sometimes say when she lies down/She can't be encumbered with a gown" or the young men and women in another broadside song, "In Favor of Courting", who "Let coats and gowns be laid aside/Let breeches take their flight."
A couple of pages later this book mentions that the practice of bundling was already declining by 1800, as Capt. E. mentioned above.
Bundling was also practiced in Finland. I read an article about it in a newpaper that my jusband gets called "The Finnish-American Reporter".
- Bundling... The Mysterious H.C. 12:07:49 8/11/98
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- bundling also in sweden anna-karin 11:40:25 8/11/98
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- Thanks for the info Lou 12:41:36 8/11/98
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- Thanks for the info Lou 12:41:36 8/11/98
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